


Come Stand Beneath the Sun

by IAmTheUltimateGleek



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/F, Graphic Depictions of Canon Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Multiple Timelines, Post-Time Skip, Pre-Time Skip, Something’s Wrong With The Professor, feral!byleth, major character deaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22081399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmTheUltimateGleek/pseuds/IAmTheUltimateGleek
Summary: Be careful chasing the ghosts that are haunting your dreams.OrByleth refuses to accept the hand Fate has dealt her students, but has also begun to lose herself in the process of altering reality.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth & Sothis
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	1. Follow The Leader

**Author's Note:**

> “And when I fall to rise with stardust in my eyes, in the backbone of matter, I’m combustible, dust in the fire.“

Death was not forgettable. It lingered heavily. In the air, on her palms. Byleth had never cared much for it, disliking how it stained all that it touched.

The way blood tasted of rusted copper, bitter and thick against her teeth, or how the scent of it could travel for miles.

And yet, from the moment she could walk, death had become the most integral part of her being. She knew to fear it, to wield it, to accept it.

It was the reality of their lifestyle, you earned only what you were willing to sacrifice. Watching someone die was already a great deal more than what most people could handle witnessing even once. Mercenaries however dedicated themselves to understanding that exact form of violence.

Aim, retreat, lunge, repeat. Learn to dodge or bare your fangs. Decide when to show mercy, but do not play the fool. There's no honor in killing, you kill to survive. If you play by made up rules, there would never be a promise for good meals or fair work. The company could wander for months on end, but only find an odd job worth less than a scrap if they dragged their feet for more than a second. 

And second chances in battle were few and far between.

For a long while, Byleth had thought she understood death well. Handling steel had come as naturally as breathing to her. When weary, she slept. When provoked, she swung. Her soft features unmoving and unbothered as body after body begun to trail in her wake.

“A demon”, she’d often heard them whisper by the fire's side. An ashen star that had fallen astray from the Abyss’s above.

At some point, the flow of it all had begun to blur. Every day, week, month, strung along through to the next, and ending another's life simply became the expectation of fighting. Sometimes, swirling threads of crimson like blood would flow through her dreams in an intricate pattern. Almost floral in design. Then the sounds of warfare and scent of black smoke and shimmering gold would stay with her throughout her rest.

It was simply how life was.

However, she had never given much thought to those dreams until much later in life. The fact that death could linger even in her dreams was perplexing, yet understandable for a time. Jeralt had always told her there was no shame in wanting to live. Every one did. Sometimes her mind would wander, remembering nameless faces and how they lied frozen after begging for her to spare them, how they wished to return to homes she'd never seen and people she'd never know. 

The weight of that desperation hadn't clicked for her until Jeralt's death. Even with dulled senses, agony had sunk heavily into her unbeating heart. Loss was unlike anything she'd ever known. There had never been time to mourn enemies, nor her allies, not even her own mother. But Jeralt's passing had shattered something deep within her, that even now she could not fully mend.

The saying goes, the first time is always the hardest to forget. Byleth hated that saying, because it had made her believe it would never hurt as badly again.

But it always did.

Especially during the war.

Rarely, could even a fraction of those she loved escape death's shadow then.

Once, several lifetimes ago, Byleth Eisner heard a scream that had torn through the skies and burned itself into every waking nightmare she would come to hold. Hilda's voice had carried across the windless planes, begging, screeching, pleading for Byleth to help her. When she finally found her, there was someone all too familiar being cradled tightly against Hilda’s chest. The soft powder blue of her hair was matted and lost beneath red splattered robes. Marianne was as still as stone and the look of fear that had been seared into her final moments of life reflected hauntingly in what still remained of her face.

The contrast of color had made Byleth's vision swim unsteadily. None of it belonged to Marianne. None of it deserved to linger on her.

Once, thousands of lifetimes ago, the sole heir to the western archipelago known as Brigid, Petra Macneary, lost her life while offering aid to the Empire's war efforts. During a battle against a ‘neutral’ party South of the Leicester Alliance, Byleth had been forced to watch, out of reach, and out of time, as one of her most beloved students, one of her dearest friends, was caught and trapped beneath a never ending torrent of hailing arrowheads and trampling hooves. 

Each death changed every time, but almost always, there came a breaking point. An instant where she could no longer bear to exist. For one it was Marianne, for another it was Petra, for a hundred more it was another name another face she loved, brought to ruin by death's touch. Time would collapsed backwards beyond her control, and the the ocean’s tides would replay the way Mercedes’ unmoving body had crashed against the shoreline or place the sharp crack of Ferdinand’s head hitting the ground on loop again and again and again. 

It was some cost, Sothis had theorized some eon or so ago. The fact that she had to live with the memory was Fate's demand for another chance. Hapi rushing to her side, only to fall from her mount from an oncoming spear. Bernadetta far from her allies, isolated, terrified and alone as she had always feared in the end. Dedue, Caspar, Leonie, every one of them she had seen fall.

It never settled in a manner that she could stomach, yet none of the cruelties she had been forced to bear witness to could compare to memory of killing El. The way her mind had unraveled at the sight of her falling forward onto the ground, how the tiled floor had felt on her collapsing knees as she crawled hand over hand to the body she'd slain. She'd believed for so long that only Jeralt’s death could have so blindingly consumed her, but something in the peace found on Edelgard's face in death had irreparably taken something from Byleth. Something unforgettable that she could not find in any other life.

The loss of love. The very same loss Jeralt knew to Sitri alone, and Byleth to El. Everything she had every learned to want, to need, in the world they had shaped, was gone. And no amount of attempts to repair that loss could ever replace watching her own hand cut down Edelgard. 

It had felt endless. Maddening. Watching everyone go where she could never follow. The only thing she could every find to cling to was Sothis's power. How it constricted as she forcibly would pull each layer of time back with the blunt of her nails. How fate would stitch the echo of each failed attempt to save them all into the most painful area of her soul. 

Whenever the world splintered, it did blindingly so. Something molten would pour from her into existence, with claws longer than that of any beast and a voice unimaginable in comprehension, before it would return and rest and wait once more for her to fail. 

And then there would be silence.

It was always in this way that Byleth would return to the beginning of it all. Her body landing upon white marble, that would cool her sweat soaked skin. A staircase of emerald that would shudder as the world slowly melted back together around beyond them both. Almost as if slowly drawing out the lingering moments of whatever death had pushed her too far this time around.

Sothis stared more often than she did speak nowadays. When their story had first begun, the Goddess had looked as though she were daring not to assume something about Byleth's newfound power, but whatever that assumption may have been, she had never dared to speak it aloud. Instead she feigned patience, allowing Byleth to do the same. They were one, yet long since separated in thought. Byleth had locked her out long ago and Sothis had never seen the girl she'd known return.

Yet something felt uniquely troubling in the labyrinth’s silence. As if the air had become charged in a way it never had before. 

Sothis could only think on the matter for a moment before she was deafened by the sound of something at the ends of the world snapping apart, loudly. The resounding crack nearly threw Byleth's prone form halfway across several suns, enveloping her senses and then releasing them both back into the spaces they had occupied before.

It happened so suddenly and yet felt as though it were a distant dream.

But they both could feel it stirring still. The tremors of change. 

The sound reminded Byleth of one time, far from forgotten, long ago. The one and only time she had ever growled out warning to Sothis's name.

That foreign tongue that had erupted from somewhere deep in her chest, low in warning. Of what? Neither knew.

But she would dare anything, or anyone, to try and stop her now.


	2. Wake Up

When Sothis thought of her children, even in slumber, Byleth mourned. The sensation of loss would radiate across their souls as memories of those who once wandered by the Goddess’s side flashed before them both as if in reach. 

Sothis could recall their laughter, their tears, the sounds of their lives being stolen and cursed. The rivers of blood that had spilled across Zanado’s soil had run thick, tainting the earth. And even now, after centuries of time, the pain Sothis had felt was understood well, for it was the same emotion she appeared to be feeling now as she watched Byleth whither upon the altar they shared. 

The distance that had grown between them had become a spindling web of white lies over time. Sothis had tried, for many lifetimes, to address the wedge before them, but Byleth’s agony had eventually come to drown out her words. 

The only memories they seemed to have left to share were those of failure and remorse. 

Byleth could no longer remember exactly when she’d begun refusing to answer Sothis or when exactly she found she could no longer meet the other’s eyes. Their fate’s had been intertwined against any means of disentanglement, and at some point in the hell they had fostered, Sothis stopped asking for her to explain. 

Denial was a far easier burden to swallow than fear. 

A very small part of Byleth wondered if Sothis’s intervention would be the catalyst for something far greater to emerge. What exactly it would be, she could still hardly fathom.

A voice that laid deeply within the pit of her stomach sometimes whispered that it would be the final thing she needed in order to surpass both of their fates.

Today was not the day she would find out whether or not that voice was right, however. Instead, Sothis fell into her usual role, long past willing to hide her disapproval.

“Well, you’ve certainly looked better…” She commented without tease or wayward scowl. Rather than respond, Byleth simply continued to mumble to herself, eyes glossed over, reliving the same pattern of death over and over and over again.

Edelgard. Dimitri. Claude. Rhea. Edelgard. Dimitri. Claude. Rhea. Edelgard. Dimitri. Claude. Rhea. Edelgard Edelgard Edelgard.

El. El…

If not her blood, six hundred others. If not his head, a thousand more. Wyvern wings, and snow laden graves. Cities engulfed in flames. Children left to wander, famished and ill. 

The Church. The Alliance. The Kingdom. Her Empire. Her people. Her father. Her students. Her El…

The question of why often left her breathless. Why her students? Why were they always, always, ALWAYS, the price? No matter what she gave, what sacrifices she made, it was never enough. None of it.

The demons who stole the light. The shadows beneath the sun. Muted sensations. A pain in her chest. Sothis. Rhea. Sothis. Edelgard. Returning to her side. Leaving once more. 

Each new construction assigned her a role. 

Professor, leader, savior, traitor, murderer. Titles meant nothing. They changed every day. A new voice. A new hymn. A new prayer that none would answer.

Meeting Rhea’s eyes, knowing their slits. Feeling thunderstorms before the clouds could even begin to roll in the distance. Knowing the ambushes, when they would shift, where monsters would gather, when the birds would sing.

Precision. Expectancy. There was no future she could not see.

Yet none of them ended happily. None without all.

Both sides of time held Byleth’s form in a vice, hard enough to crush her, yet never enough to kill.

Jeralt always accepted the offer. Byleth would never refuse to follow. He was her home. They were her home. El was her home. Where was her home?

“You should know by now, it will not become easier simply because you will it so,” From above her, Sothis’s voice began to descend from its perch.

The voice in her soul often reminded her that Sothis likely had come to hate her now. Sometimes she wondered if it was true. Sometimes she knew it to be. Her first friend. The one who had given her life. She never denied her, yet no longer spoke encouragement or her thoughts aloud. Instead Byleth had been left to decipher the other’s pity between the link they could never escape.

Even now, hearing her voice made Byleth grimace. She sat up silently clutching at her side for a wound that was no longer there. 

They both could recall it vividly, she was sure. Everything she felt, Sothis could too. 

Felix had slumped into Sylvain’s arms, unmoving and pale. Dorothea had gone unheard for too long, her lungs incapable of calling for help. Lysithea, the sound of dripping... 

In every lifetime they sought her out. All of them as if drawn to the memories of the lives they’d lost while entrusting her to guide them, to protect them. 

Why couldn’t she protect them?

The Goddess’s crest was much like a second consciousness, brimming with wisdom beyond humanity’s reach, yet completely incapable of answering that particular question. 

In the long and short of all that had ever come to be, Death was but a dormant promise for all life.

Everything constantly felt unnerving to Byleth for perhaps that very reason. Destiny could not lay its hands upon Sothis or her. The very thing that made human life precious, had been forsaken from her, and instead the choice to decide who should live or die had fallen upon her for eternity and more. 

An unspeakable burden.

Just as Sothis had finally grown tired of awaiting her response, the sound of Jeralt’s voice violently tore them apart. 

Their story had began once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE! Im back! Let me know what you think! I'll be updating both of my FE stories a bit more frequently now that i have the time. Hope yall are staying safe <3
> 
> Tumblr: Korr-A-Sami


	3. What Do You Have To Lose

The starting point had always been the same. 

Byleth would awaken, dragged from her slumber by her father’s call and then the past would come flooding forward. Realigning itself together all at once, clouding her mind and leaving her paralyzed and numb. 

Jeralt would walk through her door, and the hand he would lay on her shoulder would return the world’s sensations to her body and mind.

But for some reason, this time was different.

It had never hurt so suddenly before. 

Her body was splitting by the ends of each nerve between the past and future and present and more. That voice that had once housed itself certainly in the pit of her stomach felt as though it had moved beside her and dug the ribbed edges of its claws directly into her eyes. Unhinged from its chains as it engulfed her body in flames.

Fear and instinct sent her flying forward, out of bed and onto her feet. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe.

The sword she kept at her bedside was drawn before she could think not to swing towards the sound of her father’s voice. Had Jeralt been anyone else, anyone but the mercenary he was, they would have found their throat skewered upon the end of an iron blade. 

But they did not give him the title Blade Breaker for no reason. 

In a manner far faster than his appearance would lead one to believe, Jeralt raised the bracer along his forearm before using his bare hand to snap the metal between them in two as if it had been made of little more than glass. 

He had the center of her forearm caught between his grasp, halting any further motion. A look of pure adrenaline igniting an unfamiliar fire in his eyes.

Byleth’s consciousness startled back into focus, locking on to the sight.

She and her father stared at one another for some time. His grasp was not painful, but firm. Steady, wary. She had never reacted so strongly to anything before in his presence, and the concerning way his eyes seemed to lose the light from within nearly drew a sob from her throat.

She had never, in any lifetime seen Jeralt look so scared. And of her no less. 

The voice that had relocated itself into the back of her mind reached downwards to caress its talons against her lungs, piercing each one slowly. The drumming sound of a heart beating far too rapidly drew her further and further out of the present. 

It took her far too long to realize it was Jeralt’s, and once more so, the fact that she could hear it.

“Have you COMPLETELY lost your head?!” The sound of Sothis shrieking shook her back into reality. Into the present. 

The Goddess was alert. Awake far earlier than she ever had been in prior timelines.

“HELLO? Are you daft?! DROP your weapon you fool!” Byleth dropped the remaining half of her destroyed sword at once. Hissing as if the metal had burned her grasp.

Immediately Jeralt released his hold on her, moving quickly to grab her shoulder and meet her gaze. 

“Hey, hey, deep breath, kid. it’s just me,” The sound of his voice felt stronger than any healing magic in the world. She tried to release the tension in her form, but as always, it seemed he caught the effort she had put into doing so subtly.

“I’ve never seen you make that kinda expression before…” Whatever it was he’d seen in her eyes, it was clear he didn’t like it. 

Jeralt hid many things, but never his concern for her. It was always sincere, uncertain sure, but as true as dawn was to rise. 

She’d forgotten how deeply she was going to miss him.

“Were you having that dream again?” he asked.

‘Which one?’ she wanted to respond.

Did he mean the one of rattling chains, where corpses wandered and lies smiled? The one of mirthless laughter and bloodied furs? The one of an ethereal sea foam and scales the color of snow? Or did he mean the one of flames, with horns of gold and lavender eyes…

Whichever he meant, she already knew those were not his to recall. Fortunately, lying had become the easiest skill she’d come to master over the eons she had cycled through in passing. 

Yet lying to her father never felt any easier even with time.

“I was dreaming of a girl.” She answered mildly, face returning to its usual slate.

Jeralt relaxed at once, backing off in order to give her more space. 

“Oh yeah, you’ve mentioned her a few times-” A part of him was still definitely unsatisfied, but he also seemed more than willing to return to this familiar territory.

Right on cue, one of their men arrived to interrupt them both with a status report.

Her students had finally arrived.


	4. Prove It

More than just something was wrong, everything was.

The flow of time seemed to be accelerating just a fraction out of pace. The movement of her body felt far too fast, and the rest of the world’s far too slow. Faces that were meant to be elsewhere in placement walked through the lag of reality with intent, each one heading in all the wrong directions she knew.

Three figures met them in the torch light, and suddenly time returned to its steady forward march. 

Seeing them was a relief she’d never tire of. Enough so for her to place each issue she’s encountered so far onto the backburner of her mind for just a moment. 

Youth suited them, even if each was a facade. 

A cloak of blue dragging guilt and despair.

A flash gold and teeth, neat with deceit. 

An appraisal that sought to find any signs of a shadow in her eyes.

Dimitri began to explain the situation at hand when it started again. Byleth felt her mind slow against their will as reality began to become layered and destructively loud.

His voice grew deeper, aging with remorse, turning coarse like sand. Dimitri was suddenly standing directly before her, his right eye vacant of sight. His lance appeared in his grasp, and before she could move, he stuck her cleanly straight through her heart. 

She flinched at the sensation, and the vision was gone.

The nightmare returned to the past, but the feeling of blood on her face remained.

In the time it took her to blink and regain her bearings, Claude and Edelgard were looking at her as though she had spoken. She hadn’t. Had she?

Dimitri carried on without interruption. 

Jeralt barked for their men to move, for Byleth to lead.

So she did.

The three of them followed her without question, bracing for the worst, hoping for the best.

It was a pattern she could recall without looking once. There was no value in being patient, not here. The bandits she knew would come sought only death. And Byleth always gave them their wish.

She moved forward without a word, her students not far behind. 

Sothis had yet to stop staring at Byleth from just beyond the outskirts of her vision. She also had said nothing yet of the strange things happening around them. Perhaps she was still hesitant to try and speak with her...or equally as curious of the differences that surrounded them.

The tree lines looked thicker, and the station posting up ahead was unlit. It was supposed to be lit. But there was nothing more she was willing to waste in overthinking. 

They were already here.

“You two wait on my call,” She directed Edelgard and Dimitri to flank behind her, before silently pointing at Claude, “You, with me. Now.”

The field ahead was barren, but the sounds of an approach would undoubtedly come from the north as a distraction soon enough. 

Byleth turned without a word, pulling her dagger and hurling it with a marksman’s accuracy before her body could even finish turning.

The archer that had been lying out of sight fell from his perch, dead on the ground.

Claude whistled low from beside her. She could tell the question of ‘how she knew’ the enemy had been there was already on the tip of his tongue, but she spoke over him quickly, “Your seven. Three feet from the top, shoot now.”

He sent a perfect shot flying without hesitation. The sound of contact pierced through the rustling of leaves and just as quickly, the follow up bolt met the same mark. Yet another unprepared body hit the ground. Lifeless.

“Incredible!” Dimitri whispered in awe behind her. 

Even without looking, she could imagine his expression perfectly, having seen it a million times before. 

The cogs in Edelgard and Claude’s mind were undoubtedly beginning to turn, each calculating her usefulness. It would have made her smile in another time and place, how transparent they all could be without knowing, but for here and now she simply stared ahead blankly.

With a gesture for them to follow, she began to walk once more. 

“We’re cutting through. There’s a guard tower up ahead. Stay beneath the treeline. We’re drawing them forward” Edelgard moved to catch up to her side, curiosity intense in her lavender irises.

“You have a strange aura about you…” Byleth turned her head to pretend she was taking a quick survey of the area, schooling her face quickly before El could catch the fond expression on her face. 

When she turned back, Edelgard had already returned her own gaze forward.

“You say you're a mercenary, so show me what you can do.” Byleth nodded. Easily accepting her challenge.


End file.
